Alison Croggon

Freelance Writer and Author at Freelance

I write fantasy novels, poems, theatre, criticism, stuff. Arts editor @SatPaper. She/her. These days mostly at [email protected]

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Articles

Treasures feature in the opening weekend of Adelaide Festival 2025

Mar 7, 2025 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Alison Croggon

No one can say that the Adelaide Festival artistic director, Brett Sheehy, isn’t hands-on. As the obligatory pre-performance housekeeping announcement floated over Adelaide’s auditoriums, I thought, That voice sounds familiar. It turns out that it is Sheehy himself, an anonymous presence before every show. Sheehy, who is among other things the former artistic director of Melbourne Theatre Company, represents a steadying interregnum in what has been a volatile time at the Adelaide Festival.
2025 Perth Festival showcases eternal art for these times

Feb 14, 2025 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Alison Croggon

Festival Perth Festival delivers some big-hitting shows, including the breathtaking Mahabharata and a revolutionary Portuguese dance work. By Alison Croggon. SHARE Copy Link Bluesky Facebook X LinkedIn This month, Perth is going off. Perth’s Fringe World – a relative newcomer on the arts calendar that has grown from modest beginnings to 577 shows in 2025 – sprinkles lights and street umbrellas everywhere.
Australia on stage: the best theatre, musicals, dance and opera of 2024

Dec 26, 2024 | theguardian.com | Cassie Tongue |Alison Croggon |Tim Byrne |Jason Blake |Michael Sun |Walter Marsh | +6 more

Big Name, No BlanketsIlbijerri Theatre Company Sydney; Melbourne; Brisbane; Darwin; heading to Perth festival, 27 February – 1 MarchIt’s not often that a jukebox musical would make an end-of-year best theatre list, but Big Name, No Blankets – which tells the story of the iconic Warumpi Band – is no ordinary jukebox musical.
Acclaimed Australian theatre-makers take centre stage at Melbourne Fringe Festival

Oct 4, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Alison Croggon

It’s one of the peculiarities of our time that some of Australia’s most acclaimed theatre-makers feature in this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival. Among them are Patricia Cornelius – whose many awards include the international Windham–Campbell drama prize in 2019 – with her long-time collaborator Susie Dee, and Adena Jacobs, who last year was shortlisted for Germany’s highly prestigious Theatertreffen and was awarded a Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship.
MTC’s Topdog/Underdog is a devastating tour de force

Sep 6, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Alison Croggon

It’s long been an aggravation to me that Suzan-Lori Parks, one of the greatest playwrights now writing in English, is so unknown in Australia. Notable for their linguistic inventiveness, her plays have the formal audacity that comes only with a profound understanding of the history and traditions of theatre. She’s also African American, and therein might lie a clue: in Australian theatre, the top end of town has long tended white, male and – significantly – formally conservative.
No, we shouldn't mourn the axing of Leunig — it's time to let go of toxic nostalgia

Sep 5, 2024 | crikey.com.au | Alison Croggon

After 55 years at The Age, Michael Leunig filed his final cartoon for the newspaper last week after he was fired by Nine in what he described as “a throat-cutting exercise”. The popular cartoonist has been declared an Australian Living Treasure, but has also drawn ire over the decades for various controversies including his critique of working mothers who use childcare and taking an anti-vaccination stance. So should we mourn the axing of Michael Leunig?
MTC revives the devastating power of A Streetcar Named Desire

Jul 23, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Alison Croggon

In the popular imagination, Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire is almost inseparable from Elia Kazan’s classic film. Made four years after Kazan’s famous Broadway premiere, it featured a scandalously shirtless young Marlon Brando as the working-class Stanley Kowalski and Vivien Leigh as a fragile, mentally disordered Blanche DuBois. They are both searing, definitive performances that have dominated interpretations of the play ever since.
Acts of violence: ‘Cadela Força Trilogy - Chapter 1’

Jun 25, 2024 | themonthly.com.au | Alison Croggon |Margaret Simons |Jonathan Green |Anthony Ham

Brazilian artist Carolina Bianchi’s searingly intelligent exploration of misogynistic violence at Melbourne’s Rising is exactly what arts festivals are for Some years ago, I read Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño’s final masterpiece, 2666. Released in 2004, a year after his death, it consists of five different, surreally connected narratives.
Rising 2024 delivers art for the apocalypse

Jun 4, 2024 | thesaturdaypaper.com.au | Alison Croggon

Once upon a time, Melbourne had two major arts events, each vastly different from the other – Melbourne International Arts Festival and White Night. In 2021 they were replaced by Rising and – in the manner of Dark Mofo and Vivid – were moved to midwinter, with the aim of vitalising the business district in the colder months. Co-directed by choreographer Gideon Obarzanek and artist and curator Hannah Fox, Rising has so far had an uncomfortable history.
Stage plight: The state of Australian theatre

May 30, 2024 | themonthly.com.au | Alison Croggon |Robert Manne |Laura Tingle |Kate Manne

A generation of small independent theatremakers has been betrayed by government neglect and bad policy, creating a cultural crisis You are an artist, after all, and an artist is forbidden a career in this place; an artist is permitted only the commercial “hit”. — Toni Morrison, “James Baldwin Eulogy”I didn’t develop a passion for theatre until relatively late, in my mid 20s, when I began to encounter a kind of performance that genuinely intoxicated me. Before then, I guess I was mildly interested.